Bruce Tift on the Interface Between Psychology and Spirituality
May 2, 2023
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Esteemed author Bruce Tift discusses the interface between psychology and spirituality, exploring topics such as holding opposing views, working with limitations, and the difference between recovery practices and achievement practices. They delve into anxiety and fear as signs of growth, the practice of relationships, and the intersection of Buddhism and therapy. The podcast also touches on blind spots, shadow work, and the nature of obstacles in personal development.
Embrace contradictions and avoid seeking closure to navigate the interface between psychology and spirituality.
Shift focus from achievement to recovery practices and explore the distraction value of our problems.
Anxiety and fear can be opportunities for growth and insight on the spiritual path.
Intimate relationships offer opportunities for growth, self-discovery, and conscious practice of holding contradictions.
Deep dives
Exploring the Interface Between Psychology and Spirituality
In this podcast episode, the guest, Bruce Tift, and the host engage in a rich discussion about the intersection of psychology and spirituality. Bruce emphasizes the importance of holding contradictory views without seeking closure. They discuss the difference between recovery practices and achievement practices, as well as the distraction value of our problems. Bruce also touches on anxiety and fear, highlighting their potential for growth and insight on the spiritual path. The concept of shadow work and the practice of relationship are explored. Overall, Bruce's wide-ranging approach encourages embracing the complexities of life and finding freedom in being fully human.
The Practicality of Recovery Practices
Bruce emphasizes that our practices should focus on recovery rather than achievement. He suggests that seeing all of us as a collection of limitations can help us understand and work with our blind spots. By cultivating an attitude of inquiry and investigating our reactive experiences, we can gain insight into our outdated efforts to take care of ourselves. Bruce encourages a conscious participation in open awareness and an acceptance of our vulnerabilities. He highlights the value of embodied immediacy as a means to be present in our immediate non-conceptual experiencing.
Understanding and Working with Anxiety
Anxiety is recognized as a natural part of being human, with biological and psychological components. Bruce encourages an attitude of investigating anxiety without seeking resolution or attributing a specific cause to it. He suggests training ourselves to relate to anxiety without avoidance or repression, allowing us to work with our biology rather than against it. Bruce also explores anxiety as a fertile ground for projecting unresolved issues and urges us to stay with immediate experience of anxiety without interpretation or anticipation.
Embracing the Complexities of Life
The podcast episode delves into the complexities of life and the importance of holding contradictory views without seeking resolution. Bruce's approach highlights the value of being fully human and embracing both the wonders and challenges of life. He discusses the practice of relationship and how our unconscious patterns can shape our interactions. Bruce's work encourages a sense of curiosity, openness, and non-identification with formless panic. His wide-ranging approach allows permission to be human and find freedom in the experiences of life.
The importance of relating to openness and freedom
The speaker discusses the significance of having a relationship with openness rather than viewing it as an achievement. By frequently inviting and experiencing moments of freedom, openness, and presence, it can impact the texture of ongoing experiences and help navigate formless panic. The speaker advocates for short incremental practices as a way of tolerating openness, rather than striving for long periods of achieving it. Embracing openness can transform anxiety and fear into indicators of progress rather than regression.
The role of relationship in personal work
The speaker emphasizes the importance of relationships in personal work, specifically intimate relationships. The speaker suggests that intimate relationships offer an opportunity for growth and self-discovery, allowing individuals to explore projection, counter-transference, and disowned material. Engaging in intimate relationships can reveal patterns of emotional fusion and provide opportunities for conscious practice, holding contradictory experiences, and challenging compulsivity. By relating to our experiences and being open to contradictions, we can cultivate healthy intimacy.
Understanding self-absorption and the role of problems
The speaker proposes that most problems can be seen as self-absorption, a retreat from intimacy with immediate experiencing. Viewing problems as a form of self-absorption can shift our perspective, allowing us to approach them with unconditional kindness rather than seeing them as strictly pathological. The speaker highlights the importance of recognizing that problems serve a function and can be understood as a best effort to take care of ourselves. Cultivating an attitude of curiosity toward our experience can allow us to integrate the truth of our immediate experiencing and be more at peace with our humanity.
Join the esteemed author Bruce Tift in a cross-pollinating discussion about the interface between psychology and spirituality, the developmental and fruitional paths, or the paths of Growing Up and Waking Up respectively. Bruce discusses the importance of holding opposing, and even contradictory, views simultaneously, without any hope or desire for closure and resolution. We’re all a collection of limitations, so how can we best work with these limits? What constitutes a real obstacle in this view, and how can we work with obstacles? What about the difference between “recovery practices” and “achievement practices”? The conversation turns to the distraction value of our problems, and how ego, as an arrested form of development, is invested in maintaining struggle as a way to maintain itself. Bruce then talks about anxiety and fear, and the importance of an integral approach in relating to both. Not all fear and anxiety is problematic.
On the spiritual path, anxiety can lead to real growth, and fear can be a sign that you’re doing something right. How about the place of shadow work, and why doesn’t Bruce favor that term? How do we best work with blind spots? The practice of relationship is explored, and how we unwittingly “hire” partners, over and over, to play out unconscious processes and avoidant tendencies. How does he sustain his enthusiasm for providing therapy after decades of clinical practice? Does Buddhism need therapy – in both senses of that phrase? Is his view exhilarating or intimidating? Bruce’s wide-ranging approach gives you permission to be human, and to delight in this wonderful and terrible thing we call life. See for yourself why he is one of the most sought-after therapists in the spiritual community.
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